Lee Blessing
Lee Blessing is a major voice in modern American theater. He has written over thirty plays, including A Walk in the Woods (nominated for Tony and Olivier Awards and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Going to St. Ives, Great Falls, A Body of Water, Two Rooms, Cobb, Thief River, and the fantastic final play of Compass Rose Theater's 2012-2013 season, Eleemosynary. His plays, which have been produced both on and off-Broadway, and which have been performed worldwide, have earned two Steinberg/American Theater Critics Association awards, as well as Obie, Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and L.A. Critics Association awards, among others. Profile Theatre in Portland, OR devoted its 2010-11 season to Blessing’s work. Blessing’s TNT movie “Cooperstown” won the Humanitas Award.
For more than a decade he has headed the Graduate Playwriting Program at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Blessing is a current member or alumnus of the Writers Guild of America, west; the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis; New Dramatists in NY and the Societe des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques. Blessing is married to the award-winning playwright and TV writer-producer Melanie Marnich.